"I was reading about vim the other day and found out why it used hjkl keys as arrow keys. When Bill Joy created the vi text editor he used the ADM-3A terminal, which had the arrows on hjkl keys, so naturally he reused the same keys." As interesting as that is, John Graham-Cumming goes even further back in history. "The reason that keyboard had those arrows keys on it was because those keys correspond to CTRL-H, J, K, L and the CTRL key back then worked by killing bit 6 (and bit 5) of the characters being typed." Truly fascinating stuff, even though it's from way before my time (I'm from 1984).

See where Z, X, C and V are located on your keyboard (or refer to the US keyboard layout if needed). Looks obvious? You can do some research (simple web search should be sufficient) why this is, and why it still exists today.

Born with an AZERTY keyboard in the hand, I always figured that it was because it makes sense from a usability point of view to have cut, copy, and paste close to each other.

It's true that if you add cancel to the mix, it starts to feel like a software performance hack.